Scripps Institute of Oceanography projects that next month its monitoring station will for the first time measure CO2 at
400 parts per million. Atmospheric CO2 has risen from 280 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution. 400 ppm is an arbitrary milestone that we'll blow right past on our way to 450 ppm within a few decades. This is an unprecedentedly fast rate of increase and it's getting faster. Not all measuring stations are exactly the same: A NOAA station in the Arctic measured
CO2 at 400 ppm last year. [more inside]
posted by Sleeper
on Apr 25, 2013 -
127 comments
In a report released [Tuesday], the World Bank analyzed the consequences of allowing temperatures to reach 4°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. ... the report's authors admit that predications are a challenge. Still, they do their best to try to paint a picture, and boy, is it grim.
posted by Egg Shen
on Nov 20, 2012 -
84 comments
"Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically." Link.
[more inside]
posted by BobbyVan
on Jan 27, 2012 -
270 comments
"...Arctic sea ice – frozen seawater that floats on the ocean surface – is now at its lowest physical extent ever recorded for the time of year, suggesting that it is on course to break the previous record low set in 2007.
...
Earth has been 0.65C warmer over the past 12 months than during the 1951 to 1980 mean, and that the global temperature for 2010 will exceed the 2005 record."
2010 set to be the
warmest year on record.
posted by p3on
on Jun 20, 2010 -
306 comments
Odds of Cooking the Grandkids:
"There is a horrible paper in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which looks at how the limits of human physiology interact with upper-range global warming scenarios. The bottom line conclusion is that there is a small - of order 5% - risk of global warming creating a situation in which a large fraction of the planet was uninhabitable (in the sense that if you were outside for an extended period during the hottest days of the year, even in the shade with wet clothing, you would die)." [more inside]
posted by symbollocks
on May 7, 2010 -
47 comments
The University of East Anglia's
Climatic Research Unit suffered a
security breach this week. Hackers made off with thousands of email correspondences between some of the world's top climate scientists, and posted them to the Internet
1.
Tony Hake has posted an
article at The Examiner, highlighting what he feels are the most egregious examples of scientists manipulating and hiding data to support the established theories about Climate Change. Some of the scientists involved
counter that the quotes are taken out of context, and that "People are using language used in science and interpreting it in a completely different way".
1 I'm not going to link to them, but the Examiner article mentions where to get them.
posted by Who_Am_I
on Nov 20, 2009 -
146 comments
In 2010,
Obama will have a miserable year,
NATO may lose in Afghanistan,
the UK gets a regime change,
China needs to chill,
India's factories will overtake its farms,
Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum,
the stimulus will need an exit strategy,
the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2",
African football will
unite Korea,
conflict over natural resources will grow,
Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled,
the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable),
technology will grow ever more ubiquitous,
we'll all charge our phones via USB,
MBAs will be uncool,
the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and
Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so
the Tens begin.
The Economist: The World in 2010.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Nov 14, 2009 -
60 comments
At TED this past March, Al Gore once again presented the Mother of all Power Point Shows. This time around, there is a renewed sense of urgency, with updated slides about Arctic sea ice loss, among other things. More so than in the past, Gore specifically focuses on the necessity for laws to change, and how before that can happen, politics, especially American politics, must change as well. Another theme of Gore's latest TED appearance is how climate change is also a tremendous opportunity for a new heroic generation, to be remembered as the ones who solved the greatest crisis of human civilization.
posted by [expletive deleted]
on Apr 8, 2008 -
30 comments
"Intended to deepen our understanding of disputes over climate change and the human contribution to it," the new '
Climate Debate Daily' is brought to you by the folks who created the well-known '
Arts and Letters Daily'. Links to everything from scientific articles through PR releases down to blog entries, are arranged on the page in 'face-off' format, with pros and cons in side-by-side columns. If you want to keep on top of the debate on climate change, it seems that you'll find no better source of information anywhere ..
posted by woodblock100
on Jan 17, 2008 -
57 comments
A record number of floods, droughts and storms around the world has been characterized as a climate change
"mega disaster" by a senior UN official, a measure based on
13 emergency "flash" appeals (PDF, map) issued so far
this year (pic gallery) - three more than in 2005 which held the previous record. Sir John has expressed frustration at how little media attention in the west is being devoted to what he terms a global "creeping climatic catastrophe".
posted by stbalbach
on Oct 6, 2007 -
39 comments
The Climate Engineers.
"Efforts to manipulate the climate and weather have a long history of exaggerated claims and beliefs, and a dangerous tendency to become militarized. Even if they succeed, who will control the global thermostat?" Public policy scholar James R. Fleming explores the issues in a Wilson Quarterly article.
posted by amyms
on Jul 19, 2007 -
11 comments
A contrarian documentary on climate change produced by UK Channel 4 called "
The Great Global Warming Swindle (Google Video) has been making the rounds in the internets. Prominent among the scientists featured in the documentary is one of the most highly regarded physical oceanographers active today,
Carl Wunsch (MIT). Unlike his colleague
Richard Lindzen, though, it seems that Prof. Wunsch is not exactly pleased with being cast as a global warming skeptic. It turns out that selective editing made him seem to be saying exactly the opposite of what he was hoping to convey.
Wunch is pissed.. Also, reviews of the documentary:
Real Climate,
The Guardian (Monbiot).
posted by bumpkin
on Mar 23, 2007 -
37 comments
A revised U.S. plant hardiness map has been put out by the National Arbor Day Foundation, based on numbers from 5,000 cooperative climate observation stations throughout the United States. The foundation
forged ahead with their own revisions since the official
USDA map update has stalled. One unofficial
draft [PDF] does exist. A USDA
spokesperson said their map delay is because of fine-tuning where to draw the zone lines; the agency also plans to incorporate other data such as wind.
posted by rolypolyman
on Jan 6, 2007 -
8 comments
Global warming -- the upside: the entrepreneurs poised to make millions from new ports and shipping lanes in the formerly ice-bound Arctic circle. A fascinating New York Times article on the international land-grab following the news (reported
here, discussed
here, whitewashed
here,
et. al.) that the polar ice caps and Siberian permafrost are melting. Goodbye Gulf Stream, hello Club Med Santa-style -- first SUV to the North Pole wins!
posted by digaman
on Oct 10, 2005 -
53 comments
Siberia's permafrost is melting. New Scientist reports that 250 million acres of permafrost are thawing, exposing the world's largest peat bog. This is likely to release billions of tons of methane gas. This would likely cause a positive feedback loop, massively accelerating global warming.
posted by mosch
on Aug 11, 2005 -
87 comments
Global dimming. It's official. Particulate pollution in the air has decreased the amount of sunlight reaching the earth. How much? A fraction of a percent? Try 10% globally over the past 50 years. Worse yet, global dimming is thought to be counteracting CO2 and its greenhouse effect, lessening the worldwide temperature increase called global warming. Why's that bad? Because, in the coming decades, particulate pollution is expected to level off, while CO2 emissions are expected to rise strongly, multiplying the effects of global warming as we know it. "
That means a temperature rise of 10 degrees Celsius by 2100 could be on the cards, giving the UK a climate like that of North Africa, and rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable." Holy fucking shit! [via kottke]
posted by scarabic
on Jan 14, 2005 -
74 comments
RealClimate is a blog written by nine working climatologists from around the world (all experts in their field), focusing on explaining climate science, providing context to current reports in the mainstream media, and rebutting the fallacious arguments of carbon lobby hacks. (
via World Changing)
posted by stbalbach
on Dec 10, 2004 -
6 comments
Time to pull out the giant salt shaker - Evidence supporting Abrupt Climate Change theory builds (from a new study published in
Nature Magazine, April 22 2004) : "Rate of Ocean Circulation Directly Linked to Abrupt Climate Change - A new study strengthens evidence that the oceans and climate are linked in an intricate dance, and that rapid climate change may be related to how vigorously ocean currents transport heat from low to high latitudes....(From the ever superb
NASA Earth Observatory)
posted by troutfishing
on Apr 24, 2004 -
41 comments
